


the train ride home

by kuro49



Series: thirty days of writing '18 [7]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Drabble, Gen, POV Outsider, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 11:52:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15994634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: It is probably not common knowledge to anyone that hasn’t lived and breathed Gotham all their lives but you are lucky because you have never seen the Batman with your very own eyes. The night your luck runs out, you find yourself still on your train.





	the train ride home

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this post on tumblr](http://setsailslash.tumblr.com/post/177111200846/next-time-we-get-a-reboot-i-want-a-batman-who) in which batman is gotham's cryptid.
> 
> prompt: the train ride home

 

It is probably not common knowledge to anyone that hasn’t lived and breathed Gotham all their lives but you are lucky because you have never seen him with your very own eyes.

Outside of the cautionary tales a mother tells her child (or a crime boss tells his goons), He exists. It serves the same purpose when fear has always been a great motivator within this city's limits. He proves his existence to this city in ways beyond broken bones and dislocated jaws night after night. It sure sounds like hard work for one man but you know him as Batman even if that word is used in its loosest frame of reference.

Because it can’t really be a man underneath it all when it moves like _that_.

 

The night your luck runs out, you find yourself still on your train.

 

You take the long way home each night for a comparatively good reason because there is bad and then there is worse.

And this here is the former because you have yet to be mugged and left for dead to be found in the early hours of the morning coming home from another night shift you hate to see yourself scheduled into. But rent’s got to be paid one way or another. So you take the long way home to align yourself right within what is rumoured to be the bat’s patrol route. Not that you really know for sure but what is one more gamble on top of a life stuck on the bottom rung of Gotham's ladder.

As far as you know, he is made of shadows that drag along the grimy asphalt, something far darker than the worst of what can be done by even the Joker on a bad night.

Or so they say, but it isn’t like you ever had a reason to believe otherwise.

 

You are one stop away from your home as the wheels grind to a shrill stop, the train doors drag open with little fanfare, and the last commuter makes their exit. 

It is a warm night, and the only warning you get is the hair rising on your arms before your hand clenches tight, going bone white against the metal pole with him looking down at you from above the train tracks across the platform. He can see you far before you see him from where he hangs upside down. But you are also seeing what must be a child dangling in front of him, a mangled and torn cape moving in the stale Gotham breeze.

You don’t hear a word but you do hear laughter, and it rings sharp and faint like an echo from all around even when you know it should be coming from right _there_.

In the dark, the cape looks like it could be a vibrant yellow in the sun.

In the dark, it flutters to give way for what could be blood to splatter and drip from the soaked dark green of those gloves as the kid gestures wildly at what has to be the Bat. He is all shadows, black on black and fading fast even with the light pollution in the sky. He puts a finger up against the space where his mouth should be, and your brain can fill in what is being asked.

_Shush_ , he doesn’t need to say with lips pulled thin enough to show teeth.

 

You swallow and nod with perhaps half a mind.

You also blink.

 

The announcement runs its course, the train compartment doors slide shut.

There is an incoming train where the bat should be, its lights blinding in the dark. And you, of course, you see nothing out of the ordinary as your train pulls away from the platform even while your hand comes away stiff with strain when the laugh only continues to echo from inside your empty train cart.

 


End file.
